(Update March 26, 12:03pm)
The Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned on Thursday the military operation by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies in Yemen, state television reported.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned on Thursday the military operation by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies in Yemen, state television reported.
It gave no further details. Iran denies providing money and training to the Shi'ite Houthi militia in Yemen, as claimed by some Western and Yemeni officials.
Saudi Arabia and Gulf region allies launched
military operations including air strikes in Yemen on Thursday, officials said,
to counter Iran-allied forces besieging the southern city of Aden where the
US-backed Yemeni president had taken refuge.
Gulf broadcaster Al Arabiya TV reported that the
kingdom was contributing as many as 150,000 troops and 100 warplanes to the
operations and that Egypt, Jordan, Sudan and Pakistan were ready to take part
in a ground offensive in Yemen.
There was no immediate confirmation of those figures
from Riyadh. Al Arabiya also said planes from Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan,
Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain were taking part in the
operation.
A widening Yemen conflict could pose risks for
global oil supplies, and Brent crude oil prices shot up nearly 6 percent soon
after the operation began.
Unidentified warplanes had earlier launched air
strikes on the main airport in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and its al Dulaimi
military airbase, residents said.
That came soon after Saudi Arabia's ambassador in
Washington, Adel Al Jubeir, announced the operation.
"We will do whatever it takes in order to
protect the legitimate government of Yemen from falling," Jubeir told a
news conference.
Yemen's slide towards civil war has made it a
crucial front in mostly Sunni Saudi Arabia's rivalry with Shi'ite Iran, which
Riyadh accuses of stirring up sectarian strife throughout the region and in
Yemen with its support for the Houthis.
The crisis now risks spiralling into a proxy war
with Iran backing the Houthis, and Saudi Arabia and the other regional Sunni
Muslim monarchies supporting Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Fighting has spread across the Arabian peninsula
country since last September, when the Houthis seized Sanaa and advanced into
Sunni Muslim areas, forcing Hadi out of the capital.
Jubeir said the assaults had been launched in
response to a direct request by Hadi, who supported Washington's campaign of
deadly drone strikes on a powerful Al Qaeda branch based in Yemen. He has been
holed up in Aden with loyalist forces since he fled Sanaa in February.
Hadi remains in his base in Aden and was "in
high spirits", one of his aides said after the operation began.
A senior leader of Yemen's Houthi movement said the
Saudi air strikes amounted to aggression against his country and warned they
would set off a "wide war" in the region.
Houthi-run al-Masirah television reported that the
Saudi-led air strikes had hit a residential neighbourhood north of Sanaa and
caused dozens of casualties. It also urged medical personnel to report to
hospitals in Sanaa immediately.
No independent verification of any casualties was
immediately possible.
The White House said in a statement late on
Wednesday the United States supported the operation, led by the Arab Gulf
Cooperation Council countries, and that President Barack Obama had authorized US
"logistical and intelligence support".
Although the news sparked jitters in the oil market,
Asian importers said they were not immediately worried about supply
disruptions.
Most oil tankers from Arab producers such as Saudi
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq have to pass Yemen's
coastlines via the narrow Gulf of Aden in order to get through the Red Sea and
Suez Canal to Europe.
The 40 km (25 mile)-wide strait between Yemen and
Djibouti and the Strait of Hormuz between the Arabian peninsula and Iran are
both considered chokepoints to global oil supplies by the US Energy Information
Administration.
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